


The Final Redux

by ontologicalmystery



Category: no media - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27132716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ontologicalmystery/pseuds/ontologicalmystery
Summary: wow the way this took me a whole month to write





	The Final Redux

**Author's Note:**

> thanks slyvia plath ily xx

A mirror has sharp edges, but it is never cruel, only truthful. Although its reflection isn’t filled with any preconceptions of their counterpart, she continues to search endlessly for its lies. The mirror projects a woman in her late thirties, her tanned skin left unblemished and untainted. The only signs of aging were the grey strands she purposely left on display. She envied the woman in the mirror. There was a practiced ease to her performance, fooling everyone around her, ensuring that their eyes didn’t drown in the fatigue wracking both their bodies, passively watching as the stranger began living the life that was once hers. 

She caught them only in her reflection, following her along the leering windows plastering each building; except when she turns towards the candle’s light or the ripples in the lake’s reflection, eager to get rid of the sight of the ghostly figure. 

It must’ve started all those years ago which drowned alongside her son in that motionless lake. She watches once more, as her home becomes only a house and the walls became hollow and foreign, and the usual warm body was replaced by the feeling of cold silk. It should’ve made her feel suspicious that her once loving husband had another late-night meeting or some business trip, yet she only felt overwhelmed with relief. She felt almost suffocated in his presence that she once yearned for, for now she only tries to please him with her growing lies. 

The guilt consumed her whole, in places where she could feel her charade slipping when there was nobody left to perform for. Finally allowing herself to coexist with the stranger in the reflection, an imitation of her former self, who hands her back a semblance of the control she had lost years ago. 

If anyone saw her now, they’d pity how damaged and broken she’s become, always trying to understand the woman they once knew. Impulsively, she shatters the mirror with her fist, and it brings her some satisfaction in not having to answer for her actions. Her fingers trace around the silver cracks, awaiting the pain of the glass pressing deeper into her skin but she only winces at the blood dripping into the sink. She tells herself that it’s supposed to hurt but it doesn’t replace her constant numbness, although the tears tell her otherwise. 

The illusion also lied beyond the mirrors; sitting comfortably behind her eyes, waiting for her to sleep, preparing to torture her again as it coiled around her heart like a phantom pain. The dreams offered her an unimaginable beauty in a world filled with disarray. It recalled the moments of innocence not yet tainted by horrors of life and death, filling the missing information with false truths, creating a fiction that she could live with.

She pictures the finer details in her dreams like the sun’s warmth on her skin and the gentle breeze smelling slightly salty and the page number of the book she couldn’t bring herself to pick up again. She catches glimpses of his face, happily swimming in the lake, his sun kissed skin that looked like he was moulded by the gods themselves, innocently, he smiles at her for the last time.  
Sometimes she imagined how it would’ve been if he’d been sitting on the foreshore with her, skipping rocks or reading, anything that could’ve stopped him from drowning. After a while, her brain began to block out the eerie silence coming from the lake instead filling it with sounds of his angelic laughter and running stream that was louder than she remembers. Anything to disguise the emptiness she was left with. 

For a moment, her son is with her once more. He’s sitting with her at the dining table discussing something about school or his sports game, with the same smile that haunts her waking days. She continues this life. Until she starts noticing the lies she’s created as the illusion falls through her grasps and she struggles to salvage any of it. 

Each year she returns to the lake and the water greets her like an old friend. She always forgets how peaceful the water looks, when she only remembers it as a place of life and death. In the lake, she drowned a mother and each day the water’s surface emerges with an older woman, faithfully reminding her how much time has passed. 

The reflections slowly teach her how to coexist with her tainted memories; even when she can barely recognise herself anymore, her eyes observe the mirror wearily and the woman rewards her with tears of joy and agony, and it falls uncontrollably once more.

**Author's Note:**

> posting is actually so fun cause you just have this chaotic freedom to do things, fuck english HSC which is over wooo


End file.
